Two Weeks Off

This is our last week before Christmas Break.  Hope all of you who celebrate Christmas have a wonderful time with family and friends.  I'm going to try to not eat all the goodies that seem to be everywhere, especially in schools.

To everyone--I hope you have a peaceful time and get to relax and reflect a little.  Here's a tiny glimpse of my birdfeeder frenzy last winter:

Sunny Day Writing

It may be mid-December but it's a sunny day in our town and many elementary school students always write a morning story about the date, the weather and what they'll be doing that day.  But, it's not much fun to labor through all those words describing your upcoming day unless you can illustrate your work as well.

Drawing can be frustrating for students, especially when 2-D visual-motor skills present an extra challenge.  What to do?  We OTs can use simple drawing to help students practice pencil grasp, near-point copying, geometric concepts and the fine art of taking turns.

Instead of using two little pieces of paper for our step-by-step drawing, I drew my picture on a piece of scrap paper and the student drew on their journal paper, within faintly-sketched boundary lines.  We took turns drawing each part of the picture and the student ended up with a clear illustration for their sentences.

 Of course, it provides a wonderful opportunity to practice functional spelling when you label your picture.

Different student here and we're just taking turns drawing a seasonal picture.  I was intending to draw a tannenbaum but the student thought it looked more like a person.  Oh well.

Voting Closed

Yesterday I posted a plea for votes for the Assistive Technology Center door in our building's decorating contest--voting is now closed.  If you voted--thx bunches!

Wonderful blog for toddlers and young children

Engaging Toddler Activities

Lots of great OT ideas here.  Love this one about using bubble wrap to indicate your test answers.

Example of Using Microsoft Excel to "Color"

An interesting, no-frills, no-fuss leisure activity for students who enjoy creating "pictures" on the computer.  This student discovered on her own how to use Microsoft Excel with the computer mouse to "color."  I created a template for her to use each time, with the names of fellow students and her teachers' names, but she simply erases the names and colors as she wishes.

If you want to add an educational twist, you can use the same idea to write alphabet letters and numbers.

Since so many families have the Microsoft Office suite on their personal computers this can be an option for leisure computer activities at home.

Shameless begging for a vote for our door decorating contest

The votes must be in tomorrow by 3 PM, Eastern Standard Time USA.  Please read the impassioned plea in the text below and listen to your heart--then please vote for our decorated door in the Assistive Technology Center.  This year's door decorating theme focused on old holiday movies. 

If it's difficult to figure out from the photos, the door represents a huge iPad.  Please do not send your vote to me--there is an e-mail in the text below for sending in your vote and I'll repeat it here as well:  beth_cousins@ccpsnet.net  Simply say that you are "voting for the AT Center door."

Thank you!


The Fulghum Center is once again having a door decorating contest. The AT Center won 2nd place last year. This year, the theme is “Holiday Movies” . ANYONE can cast a vote – simply e-mail beth_cousins@ccpsnet.net and please vote for the AT CENTER DOOR no later than 3pm Tuesday, December 13.


Attached, please find photos of our door. This door is the largest iPad you have ever seen! The apps on the door are a play on words for various holiday movies. Through teamwork and creativity, we have incorporated CCPS, Technology AND holiday movies! Enjoy and thanks for your vote!


With appreciation and technology cheers,  the Assistive Technology Center Staff

Functional Fine Motor Skills and Self Help Skills

We often write "Student will independently perform typical classroom fine motor and self help activities" in reports and IEPs.  What's that?

Here is a sweetie with left hemiplegia showing full independence with "typical classroom fine motor and self help activities" as she retrieves items from her backpack, hands in her homework and prepares to eat breakfast in the classroom.  Believe me, sometimes it's not easy to open that twicky milk carton but, heh, it is chocolate milk and that's work the effort.

 It warmed my heart to see her retrieve a pair of scissors to open the cellophane wrapper of the "Power" donut; an idea we practiced last week.  No, I didn't let myself say anything about whether or not donuts can possibly be part of a healthy breakfast.

 Try opening a milk carton with one hand.  Oftentimes I'll ask students to partially open both sides and then pull the diagonal corners apart just enough to insert a straw.

 Pretty good eye-hand coordination, I'd say.

Grab that package of flimsy plastic utensils, straw and napkin in your fist and knock it on the table until the top breaks open and you can pull out what you need.

Video of Thankfulness Cards activity

Here's a video of the steps we used to create our Thankfulness cards for families:

Creating Thankfulness Cards in High School

I Really Don't Love Spiders

What would I do without Ed Emberley books???  We took turns drawing a spider, sharing one pencil.  Students are so happy to be able to draw something recognizable that they don't mind the handwriting practice at the end, when they write the name of their creation.

 You can talk about top, middle, bottom, right, left, how many legs does a spider have on this side, how many on the other side, the spider's smile is wide--not narrow, the body we made out of a thumbprint is a sideways oval and not a tall oval, the spider's "string" comes down from the ceiling.....so many opportunities for talking about 2-D spatial concepts and directionality.

Wonderful book on hand skills

A person wrote and asked about how to learn more about developing hand skills.  Rhoda Erhardt wrote a wonderful book years ago and I learned a great deal from it: 

Developmental Hand Dysfunction:

Theory, Assessment, and Treatment

What Are You Thankful For This Christmas?

High schoolers in a class for students with autism created cards during our integrated therapy session yesterday, to express how they are thankful for their families.  We incorporated actual photos of most students and used a photo from a newspaper ad to represent the student whose family does not permit photos taken at school.  When presented with several ad photos to represent her, of course our student chose the most attractive photo of the bunch!

It's a simple activity, except for using those tricky scrapbooking scissors!  Some of those are hard to use on the flimsy holiday wrapping paper I grabbed from home.  Most students chose to simply use regular scissors but our speech-language pathologist made sure she kept her hand tightly over the scissors caddy until the students specifically asked to use a scissors.  It was my job to say, "Go ahead and start cutting out your photo," once, twice, thrice...until the students realized that we really weren't going to hand them the scissors and they had to ask for them.  The SLP calls this, "sabotaging the task."  It's very hard for me to remember to do this since my focus is so much on the fine motor aspect of these sessions and not the communication piece.

 Folding the paper like a book.

 Nice, tight crease.

 Make sure the corners match up.

 No access to the scissors unless you request them!

 Adding a festive "frame" around the photo.

 Make sure the frame sticks on the paper.

 Some frames are a little wider than others.

 Writing the note inside.

 Some handwriting is teensy, but legible.

 Great sensory opportunity for deep pressure input to the hands.

This student wrote his note in a secret code.

Be sure to find out ahead of time if any students do not celebrate holidays at their homes, or if a particular decorating scheme should be avoided and you need to use more neutral colors.  The families of the students in this particular class do celebrate Christmas so we went with red and green construction paper as well as newspaper photos of wreaths, pine trees and holiday lights on buildings.